How to…carve a traditional cat-head part 2

At the end of Part One the carving was pretty much completed, the bulk of this section is, for the most part, a case of refining the work already done, but, the method for carving the mane is worth looking at in a little detail.

Before we get on to the mane, there are a last few little details to sort. Here the nostrils and the final shape of the muzzle are marked out.

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The nostrils have been carved with a teeny number 3 gouge. The muzzle shape has been finalised and that has allowed the small teeth to be carved at the same time as the mouth has been cut back lower than the height of the canines which in turn has allowed them to be roughed out, although the mouth will be made deeper still later.

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Here the lower lip has been rounded and cleaned-up, but also work is starting on the mane. The flow of the locks has been marked and the area between the pen-lines is being hollowed with a small fairly deep gouge. This technique for carving fur/hair is to work and re-work the lock of hair with progressively deeper and narrower gouges so that the overlapping cuts do not remove the preceeding cuts but rather they accentuate them.

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The last few cuts have been made with a v-tool producing deep cuts that in turn hold onto shadows, further accentuating their depth. The mouth is now fully cut back and the eyes carved. The iris is carved with three cuts, a vertical stab at the centrewith a staight chisel to allow the waste to fall out cleanly when the two side cuts are made into it. Since the eye is domed these cuts can also be made with a straight edged tool and will still result in the cats-eye shaped iris, although, I did use a shallow gouge.